Time Sifter
Shlomit Lehavi
InstallationDecember 10, 2009 – January 23, 2010
Time Sifter is a viewer-controlled environment immersed in visuals and sounds that plays on the concept of the time-machine in the digital age. The piece suggests a journey in time through motion, space and sound. A totem pole shaped steel construction, composed of circular wooden sieves (that were hand-crafted in Istanbul and retrofitted with projection material), is both the mechanism and the metaphor of sifting time. The viewer interacts with the piece by flipping the sieves around the x-axis. With each flip, the video content changes so that the viewer has control over re-creating the environment, the video sequences and the narrative. The translucent mesh creates a two-layered, three-dimensional effect on the screened video inside the round sieve and hence an additional experience of time and space.
Time Sifter was a 2008 awardee at the Future Places Festival in Porto and was featured at the 2009 re-new Festival in Copenhagen.
About the Arist
Born in Tel-Aviv, Brooklyn-based Shlomit Lehavi is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with new-media as well as interactive and site-specific installation. Narrative identities and their intersections across time and space are key concepts for the artist. In examining these networks of identity, her work reflects upon balances and conflicts between the collective and the individual. She is currently developing a massive participatory social web installation.
Lehavi has exhibited and curated shows internationally, including the Bat-Yam Museum (Bat-Yam, Israel), Artist Space (New York), and Flexspace (Austin). Lehavi is the recipient of an America-Israel Cultural Foundation fellowship and a fellowship from the Tisch School of Arts. She holds a Master’s degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Image © 2012 by Tim Deussen/fotoscout.de